Vibrant Eyes | Din Djarin

39: change

The first thing Ira could remember was a color.

Purple, to be specific. Was it the sky? Was it the ceiling or walls?

A sweater? Well, she liked to think so.

It was something she clung to all throughout her childhood and adult life. She didn't see much else so the thought that the one thing she remembered ever seeing could've been something of her mother's, something to remember and tie them together, brought her great comfort. Through being taken from her family at a young age and told she possessed some grand affinity to a greater whole and all the years of hardship and war that followed, she clung to the idea of that sweater and the woman who wore it.

She imagined it to be soft beneath her fingers, to scratch her cheek as her mother held her close. Wanted to know what it smelled like, if its scent reflected its color in gentle, calming lavender.

Perhaps it was ironic that the only color she remembered was the only one she'd ever see. It seemed entwined within her very path through the fates of the Force. 

The kyber crystal she found in her training. The color of her lightsaber and her master's. The Force winding between every living thing and tying it to her.

Purple. Violet and violent. That was who she was.

A storm in a person further stoked through war and pain. Until she found her center in the storm, the eye of it and the calm, she would never know anything beyond darkness and violet, bleeding light. She couldn't see anything beyond it all.

Ira was alone and knew no more than that. 

Even as she spent years submerging herself into the Force and establishing a life in a small village on Sorgan, she was alone. For all of those years, even with the company of Omera, Winta, and many others, she kept her storms to herself. She never told anyone who she really was, what she could really do.

She merely let the lies and the simplicity of it become all of who she was.

The village assumed her to be a shaman, so she let them believe it. They believed her to be a healer, so she was. They thought she was whole, so she acted as though she was. Like most, her accuracy in sight convinced them she saw their vibrant world as well as they did.

Like always, Ira lived and became those secrets. Ever since she was young, the Force called out to her like nothing else. Perhaps it was a natural aptitude or perhaps it was because she was not blinded by the surfaces of their universe.

Sight was a luxury and she learned that very young. While others would boast on the beauty of skylines and dresses, she saw a beauty beyond that. Because she did not see the product but the source.

Everywhere she turned, the universe flowed with the Force. In strings and wisps of brilliant hues of purple, she saw the spinning of distant stars and the current of unseen winds. Ira saw it coil in the hearts of the people around her and it whispered to her its secrets as though it had always been waiting for someone to truly see. 

And in her stay on Sorgan, she allowed herself to fade in mind and solidity to become one entirely with the Force.

Ira expected to stay that way for the rest of her life. As day by day, she faded further into the hold of life itself. As it robbed her of the mind she offered it to take, only so she would never have to remember again.

Ira had so many memories. They sat heavy in her heart but lived on in her mind. Because her memories were living things, tapestries of senses and the true essence of moments.

She could remember the feel of her master's gentle touch on her temples, guiding her through the storm of the Force around her. The scent of the caves and the feel of holding her kyber crystal in her hands for the first time. The ringing of screams off metal walls, whether her own or others she had never been able to discern. The scent of blood and pain and dust.